Postcards From The Share Button

Younger gamers today don't know how good they've got it when it comes to taking screenshots, watching cutscenes, making videos or even just streaming a playthrough live at the touch of a button. On top of that it's possible to find centuries worth of clips, analysis videos and let's play to quickly grab that screenie or scrutinise every frame of a trailer or cutscene. With photo modes, share buttons and title screen galleries of movies it's never been easier to see ~~Chun Li's knickers~~ capture your favourite bits from games from boring headshot compilation vids to those "you'd never believe it if you didn't see it" moments.

We've written a bit about share buttons before and a quick peek at the gigabytes of stored videos and images is testament to how frequently we use ours. Back in the day we'd have memory cards with various save games just before cool cutscenes and I remember resetting FFVII and FFIX games after a cool cutscene for the first time to make sure to save just before it triggered to be able to show friends or rewatch sequences over and over.

But what or who are most of these collections, which will never be seen or shared, of virtual postcards and videos for? Proof of an in game achievement? To be shown as a slideshow at your funeral? To keep SD card manufacturers in business? If, like us, they just sit on digital storage until eventually the storage fails or chucked in the bin when we kark it. What's the psychology behind these virtual souvenirs? We hit the share button ridiculously frequently and today we're gonna take the time to navel gaze and have a look at why we took some of these selected highlights from our album and some suggested genre titles for video game photography.

LOOK MOM I DID IT! (Bonus points if you know the game, I don't).

Blink and You Miss It. Photos from those time limited events as proof we were there and to capture the dialogue you'll never see again (they've now started rerunning these Splatfests)

Character Intros. Again those little snippets you only see once and can't easily make happen. Also Peach with a gun!

HOW DID THIS GET IN HERE? THIS ISN'T ONE OF OURS, I DON'T KNOW WHO TOOK THIS

Filed under 'babies first steps'

Now available in digital format. Capturing the images we couldn't back in the day. Always loved this title screen. Who knows, maybe I'll do something with this?

Pokemon Snap.

Pokemon Snap Pokemon Version.

I actually don't know why I took this. Look at me being carried by the rest of the team. That's the bucket life for ya. Note to self. Delete and only keep the ones of me pwning.